Description
Befriend a budding poet and his adoring mother in this seductive early novel - winner of the Prix Medicis - by the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
'An artist, clearly one of the greatest to be found everywhere.' Salman Rushdie
Milan Kundera initially intended to call this early novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to him, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. He takes us through the young man's fantasies and love affairs in a characteristic tour de force, alive with wit, eroticism and ideas.
Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud. Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a somber farce: an artist as a young man.
Befriend a budding poet and his adoring mother in this seductive early novel - winner of the Prix Medicis - by the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
About the Author
The French-Czech novelist Milan Kundera was born in the Czech Republic and has lived in France since 1975. He died in Paris in 2023.
Book Information
ISBN 9780571197774
Author Milan Kundera
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 240g
Dimensions(mm) 197mm * 129mm * 21mm
